In early April 2022, Politico published an investigation into the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) elucidating how the agency prioritizes the management of drugs ahead of food, to the detriment of those living in the United States. Journalist Helena Bottemiller Evich conducted over 50 interviews with industry stakeholders and individuals within the agency to write the story. In a follow-up piece, Evich provides four key takeaways from the investigation, two of which concern food processing and packaging: (i) The food division has structural and leadership problems that lead to excessively long time lines for any policy change, and (ii) FDA has made little progress in the last few years on keeping toxic elements out of baby foods.
In her report, Evich outlines cases of water safety standards and changes in official definitions of foods that took a decade or more to accomplish. Sometimes by then it was too late to solve the underlying issue since the industry had moved on to different technology. Since Evich’s work was published, there has been increasing discussion about the role of the FDA. For instance, industry, consumer groups, and US Congress have called for the agency to improve its food program or to even separate the management of food and drugs into two agencies.
In an unrelated analysis published around the same time, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found “nearly 99 percent of all food chemicals introduced since 2000 were greenlighted for use by the food and chemical industry… not by the Food and Drug Administration.” According to EWG’s analysis, “food and chemical companies have petitioned the FDA only 10 times to approve a new substance.” The other 756 of the 766 chemicals were introduced to the food supply under the “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) rule.
The GRAS rule has been under considerable scrutiny from NGOs and consumer safety organizations in recent years (FPF reported, also here and here). In 2021, the Toxic Free Food Act (FPF reported) and Food Chemical Reassessment Act (FPF reported) were introduced into US Congress to address some of the issues within the FDA.
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Helena Bottemiller Evich (April 8, 2022). “The FDA’s food failure.” Politico
Helena Bottemiller Evich (April 9, 2022). “4 takeaways from our investigation into the FDA’s byzantine food arm.” Politico
Michael Taylor (April 11, 2022). “Opinion | It’s Time to Fix FDA by Breaking It Up.” Politico
Helena Bottemiller Evich (April 11, 2022). “Lawmakers demand answers from FDA after investigation on food failures.” Politico
Consumer Brands Association (April 25, 2022). “Industry leaders call on FDA to improve food program through unified leadership and greater accountability.”
Linda S. Birnbaum (April 21, 2022). “Op-Ed: FDA fails to protect the public from chemical health risks.” Environmental Health News
Olivia Backhaus and Melanie Benesh (April 13, 2022). “EWG analysis: Almost all new food chemicals greenlighted by industry, not the FDA.” EWG
Tom Neltner (April 26, 2022). “Our experience with FDA’s food chemical program reinforces alarming findings from Politico investigation.” Environmental Defense Fund
